Hopefully this is the right place. I used to work for a niche art company doing various marketing tasks. Then I moved across the country. Now a few months later, they want to hire me to write and create their twice-weekly email newsletters. I did this for them when I worked there. This is a small company and these newsletters would reach about 5,000 people.

I would be writing the copy and designing the look of the newsletter (inserting photos, videos, header banners, etc) using one of their templates.

How do I quote this? When I worked there, it usually took me about a week to create 1 newsletter--but that's because I had many other job duties as well.

I also do not own the software I used at the company-Adobe Dreamweaver.

I hate to sound like your least favorite schoolteacher, but you should start with a search on the forums here and then come back with further questions once you've done some basic research.

How to charge, like what to charge, comes up here regularly and, in essence, the information doesn't change that much.

However, the community can't tell you what to charge. The answer to that question will depend on a combination of
*what you need to earn in the time it will take you to complete the job,
*what you know how to do and
*how experienced you are at doing it.
Plus, if you're planning to be business-like about it, some calculation representing overhead and business profit.

Thanks for the tips, although I did search this forum and google prior to posting this, specifically searches on email newsletters. I think I've got the basic idea (hourly vs per project, time spent, what I want to be paid, etc) but I was hoping to get a general idea of how something like this is charged, since I've never done this (I'm a wedding photographer now, this would be my first freelance job).

So I guess I could answer that as...

-I know how to use dreamweaver, since that's what I used at the company
-Beginner to intermediate experience with dreamweaver (can do basic HTML, can mostly figure out the kinks on my own)

-answering what I need to earn is difficult, and probably why I'm getting stuck. I worked at the company making $15/hr. So how can I ask for that now, doing 1 thing, whereas I was doing many things while working there? I also dont "need" any certain wage, as this would be more "fun money" than "need to live" money.

I thought maybe there would be different rates based on if I designed the template (I'm not), how many people will get the email (5,000), or something else I'm missing besides a straight time breakdown-->amount to charge.

If you had already done a search I apologize for calling you out about that. In general questions of the "tell me everything I need to know" type suggest to me (and some others here) that the poster hasn't done their homework.

The truth is, there is no standard way to charge, just as there's no standard rate to charge. (Establishing either would be considered restraint of trade.)

However (and I get really crabby teacher-like about this), if you are taking this on as a supplement to your real work, you owe it to those who actually attempt to earn a living doing this kind of work to charge a professional rate. You also owe it to yourself: the fact that you don't really need the money shouldn't be a reason to offer a discount price.

If you're totally in the dark about how to charge try this:
1. Determine your monthly expenses: rent, food, utilities, car or other transportation expenses, insurance, etc. etc. This is the amount you must have to keep body and soul together (as they say)
1.a add to this number federal, state and local taxes that you will (ahem) pay on this income.
2. Divide this number by 4 (number of weeks in a month). This is what you have to bring in per week.
3. But using this number alone is also called "working for expenses," You might consider adding something between 5% and 100% to cover what would be profit and salary.
4. If you think it will take you 1 week's worth of time (40 hours) to turn out this email newsletter, then the unit of money you've figured out from above is the least you should charge.

Should you ask this company to provide you with access to Dreamweaver, if that's the program they want you to use? Should you just eat the cost as the cost of doing business? Account for it in some other way? Up to you.

I believe that I and others have outlined this further in other posts on TF.

You should first know what your hourly rate is - the post above helps with working that out.

Then design & create a 'dummy' HTML email newsletter and see how long it takes.

Take the number of hours and multiply by your hourly rate.

this is what YOU should charge for email newsletters.

If you get clients saying yes to this rate, then it's priced competitively, if not them maybe it's not something you should be concerned with and drop it from your offering.

Don't worry too much about what the competition charge, but on what makes you better than them. If you compete purely on price, you'll go out of business pretty quickly when someone comes and undercuts you.